BIZARRE RUNWAY, BIZARRE BOOZE

The runway of Dak To 2, once used for secret missions. But what's that brown powder covering it?

I’m looking at the most bizarre sight I’ve seen in Vietnam yet.

I’m only a few miles from the Cambodian border, on another former US air base known as Dak To 2. This is one very long American made runway I'm standing on, lengthy enough for heavy cargo planes to use, though it hasn’t seen a take off or landing in years. Abandoned after the war, all the base's bunkers and buildings have been torn down, much like I had seen at Camp Enari. The looted building materials were recycled or sold long ago.

But that’s not what is so bizarre about this airfield. The strangest thing about the runway here, is not the runway itself, but what lies on top of it. I look down where the blacktop should be, and see it’s covered by a light brown substance. This isn’t the tarmac at all. I look from one end of the nearly mile long runway down to the other. The entire runway is covered with powdered cassava!

The source of tapioca, cassava is a plant grown in Vietnam for its starchy roots. After it’s been harvested around Dak To, it’s ground into a fine powder, and then poured out here all across the runway. The whole airstrip is now used for drying out the powdered plant. This is the strangest use of a former military base that I’ve ever seen. I scrape away at the layer of powdery substance, and find that the blacktop is still there underneath. Running the cassava through my fingers, I find it’s not quite dry yet.

The runway is now used for drying cassava for animal feed!

Way down on the other end of the runway is a farm tractor, driving back and forth with a scoop, turning over the cassava to dry it out. Sitting on the runway beyond, is a pile of powdered cassava two stories high. This is the finished product. From here the cassava is loaded onto trucks and sent for packaging. This doesn’t look like a very sanitary way to process food, and my guide Mat explains. “This not for people,” he says. “They make food for animal.” So this mile long stretch of cassava is for animal feed. I believe him, I think.
 
Leaving the main runway, we walk onto the old taxiway. Mat says, “American airplane here.” What he meant, is that US aircraft used to park here. The taxiway leads to a line of berms that were used to surround aircraft to protect them from attack.
I recall a conversation with Phillip, the war veteran I knew who had spent time here. “There were Special Forces guys based over there,” Rick recalled of Dak To 2. “Their planes were unmarked. We thought they were going into Laos and Cambodia.” This runway sits only six miles from the Cambodian border, with the Laotian border just to the north. Special Forces soldiers flew out of here on secret missions to attack North Vietnamese Army (NVA) supply lines, disrupting the ever changing network of jungle paths and roads, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 

With this strategic base so close to Cambodia, it made a tempting target for the NVA, and it was shelled often. There were a lot of landmines and unexploded bombs across this property from all the fighting here before, but most of them were cleared after the peace. Mat walks up a berm, telling me that it’s safe. “Here, see?” Mat says, and he picks up a piece of rocket shrapnel. Scanning the ground further, he finds a section from an M-60 ammunition belt. 

Holes on the old base are from scrap metal hunters. Sometimes they find unexploded bombs.

This base and others around Dak To were attacked often. Occasionally they faced so many enemy troops, that they were cut off and under siege. To keep them from being overrun in 1967, the Army brought in a special unit. 

“The 173rd Airborne went in there, pushed out the NVA. A lot of them got killed,” Phillip told me. The Air Cavalry flew in the Airborne troops, and some of the most ferocious battles of the war took place in those highland hills.

“It was terrible up there, man,” Phillip remembered. His unit had to resupply the Airborne troops on the battlefield, and evacuate the wounded. One day they had to airlift out the most grim cargo of all, the bodies of 30 American soldiers.

“Their hands were bound behind their backs,” he says, recalling how the bodies were found. “They were shot in the back of the head.” This was a unit in a heavy firefight that had been running out of ammunition. They had surrendered to the NVA, only to be executed. The NVA had even taken their boots. 

After taking the hills and forcing out the NVA, the remote, vulnerable hill posts were abandoned. Later after things quieted down, they were re-occupied by the NVA. “Then they had to come back, do it all over again,” Phillip said of the Airborne. “I had a lot of respect for them.”
American Generals boasted of killing thousands of enemy troops, but the fact was that they still were fighting to take the same hills over and over again. “The war was a total waste,” Phillip told me with scorn. Even with a high enemy body count, it was becoming difficult for the American war effort to show real progress in Vietnam.

I walk with Mat across the berms, and find there are holes everywhere. But these weren’t from bomb craters, they're fresh, dug by post-war scavengers. “They look for metal,” Mat says, making a digging motion. Scrap hunters with metal detectors combed through here, digging up whatever they could find to sell for recycling. Between the berms, I notice that most of the old blacktop for the taxiway has also been torn up and removed.

Charlie Hill, which ARVN troops defended to the last man. It's still covered with UXO and landmines today.

From up here, I get a great view of the surrounding landscape. There are farmers fields near the cassava covered runway, and across the Dak Poko River to the south is a beautiful mountain ridge. Mat tells me we can’t walk up there, since there are still many landmines.

“There was a lot of fighting up there,” Mat told me of the former firebases on the ridge line. the These mountains overlooking Dak To 2 were key to defending the highlands. By 1972 American ground troops had left the area, leaving ARVN troops in control. Although the ARVN soldiers were often accused in the past of being unwilling to fight, one unit fought bravely to hold one of the posts I see, called Charlie Hill. They fought for days, and refused to surrender to the communists, who had them surrounded. The ARVN soldiers made their last stand on Charlie Hill, and the 150 soldiers there fought to the last man. With the firebases taken, Dak To fell soon afterward.

By the time Dak To fell, Phillip the door gunner had already departed Vietnam, and returned to California. He left the military behind and became a corrections officer. While working at a California prison, he guarded over prisoners such as Sirhan Sirhan, and Charles Manson. After having already faced the NVA, they were easier for him to deal with.

But Phillip never forgot Vietnam, and he looked for an opportunity to come back. In the 1980’s he was among one of the first groups of American war veterans to return. “I came back because I wanted to see what it was like,” he told me.
 
Phillip returned many times and traveled throughout Vietnam, even to Hanoi. But he still hasn’t come back to Dak To. Like some other US war vets who have returned to Vietnam he hasn’t revisited the places where he had his worst experiences. That’s certainly understandable.

Mat says to me, “I don’t see my father in three months, stop my father’s house. You want to eat lunch?” I eagerly agree. I haven’t been in many Vietnamese homes, and his father’s house is close by. I’m curious to see how someone lives on the land of a former US base.

'Snake wine', a preferred alcoholic drink among Vietnamese men

We pull up, and his father comes out to greet us. He’s darker skinned than most Vietnamese, and a former engineer. He moved here from North Vietnam to work right after the war. Now comfortably retired, his well built house is larger than most in Dak To.

Mat shows me around, and out in the backyard, he points out a a pile of torn up asphalt. This was taken from the old base. Now I know where that blacktop went that was removed from the taxiway. I wonder how they are going to sell, or recycle it.  

We sit down on a floor mat in the kitchen, and his mother serves us a traditional Vietnamese lunch. There’s loads of rice, salad, stir fried vegetables and fish. I eat my fill, it's delicious. It’s one of the better lunches I’ve had in Vietnam. Then his father takes out a large diabolical looking glass jar. Inside is a dark liquid, with herbs and other contents I can’t make out.

“Snake wine,” Mat tells me, and his father pours the strong liquor into tiny cups for the three of us. We clink glasses and drink. It’s strong, and tastes much like vodka. His father immediately pours out more. I’m the first American guest he’s had here, and he’s in a hospitable mood.

I hold up the jar and peer in, looking for the snake inside. It's usually a curled up cobra. I don’t see one.

“Snake eggs,” Mat says, pointing out the two eggs in the bottom. This should be more accurately called, ‘snake egg wine’. I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve seen snake wine before. Besides containing coiled up snakes, they  sometimes have other dead animals fermenting inside the bottle along with them. I’ve seen scorpions in snake wine, and even a bird that still had feathers.

“My father drink snake wine every day,” says Mat. “he says this keep him healthy.” I wonder how true that is. His father lives in a home built on a former military base, a place that was probably contaminated with Agent Orange. Yet here he is in his 60’s, and he’s still healthy.

Although Mat and I are done drinking, his father downs another shot. “You should drink this every day also,” his father recommends to me. I don’t argue with him, but I think I’ll stick to vitamins. I didn't mind sampling his wine, but for me, drinking remains of snakes is not really my cup of tea.

REMAINS OF CAMP ENARI

Outline of old Military Police post at Camp Enari entrance

We’re south of Pleiku, driving to an old US military base. Suddenly, my Vietnamese guide asks me, “would you like to see the MP (Military Police) Gate?” I say yes, and our SUV immediately stops. We get out, I look around, and see only brush and small trees about. I wonder, where is the gate? I don’t know it, but we’ve just driven over it.

Outlined in the middle of the pavement, there's a diamond shaped line of cement. This was the foundation that surrounded the guard shack at the base's entrance. The foundation itself was finally chopped down to road level two years ago, since motorcyclists kept having accidents from running into it at night. Given the amount of drunks driving around on motorbikes in Vietnam, that’s not surprising.

Looking around, I see no control tower, no old barracks, no fencing, nothing. There are now farming fields, and cattle grazing nearby. There are no other  visible remnants of the old base in sight. It’s hard to believe that this was once Camp Enari, former base of the US Army's 4th Infantry Division.

Camp Enari in 1969 (Archive photo)

After the 1973 Paris Peace agreement, the 4th Infantry departed, and the base was turned over to the ARVN. After they abandoned the base later, nearly everything left here was looted, dismantled or destroyed. There is another old US base in Pleiku, Camp Holloway. But I can’t visit there; it’s now occupied by the Vietnamese Army! Camp Enari on the other hand, has ceased to exist.

We hop back into the SUV and drive onto the former base, arriving at the former Hensel Army Airfield. Getting out again, I see serrated metal visible in the reddish dirt before me. Laid down by military engineers, this steel matting used to make up a layer of the runway. These old runway remnants are the only thing left. Everything else is gone. In the late 1960’s there were more than 10,000 American troops based on this patch of land. Now there are few traces left to show that they were ever here at all. 

Serrated lines in the dirt are the remains of the Hensel Air Field runway

Looking to one end of the runway, it’s now covered by a building that processes coffee. Other parts of the installation have become a cement factory, but even with these small businesses, there are few other buildings. Most of the old base is now open country. There is farmland, thick with plots of coffee and cassava. The rest is open field, with the occasional herd of cattle passing through to graze.

From here we get a view of Dragon Mountain which used to have a small US Army lookout post on top. It’s been replaced by two towers, a TV tower and mobile phone tower, on each end of the flat topped mountain. Technology is slowly coming to the highlands.

My guide tells me that a couple days ago, she brought a former USAF soldier named Kim here, who had served a tour of duty on Camp Enari. When she brought him back to the former base where he had spent a year of his life, he was stunned.

“He cannot believe how much it change,” she said. “He walk around for 1 1/2 hour, looking for things to remember.” 

Dragon Mountain today, topped with cell phone towers

She gestures and says, “There is Artillery Hill.” I turn to see a sloping hill across the road in the distance. Kim told her about how he had gone up Artillery Hill, and sprayed dioxin there to kill the brush. At the time, they didn’t know how poisonous it was, so they took few safety precautions. As a result, he now has serious respiratory problems, and has difficulty breathing normally. 

It’s not just the local Vietnamese who have suffered the ill effects of Agent Orange. Thousands of American soldiers became ill from their exposure to it as well. It seems that when it comes to Agent Orange exposure, the land may be recovering faster than people do. 

Old map of Camp Enari during the war

LADY BAR OWNER IN VIETNAM

Bartenders spin flaming bottles in a Danang bar

Chau is an attractive, friendly Vietnamese woman, with a wide smile and a kind voice. She speaks English well, and at 30 years of age, she’s already the owner of her own business in downtown Danang.

“I have this bar two year,” she says proudly from behind her dimly lit bar. Tonight's a rare occasion when she’s wearing tight clothing, and it complements her womanly figure. This gets more than a few looks from her male customers. Some are Vietnamese, but most are western men. But unlike less reputable places, this isn’t a bar for working girls. In Chau’s bar, (name is withheld), she doesn’t allow prostitutes. “When they come in, I ask them to leave,” she says.

Chau isn’t from Danang, she’s from a village outside the city. She may be a businesswoman now, but capitalism wasn’t always popular with her family.

“My father was Viet Cong,” she confesses to me. “He no like Americans. He still hate Americans. Many VC, still hate Americans. But most of them are dead now.”

Back in the war years, Chau’s hometown was a Viet Cong stronghold. Her father’s side may have won the war, but his family paid a high price. “His two brothers died. His mother and father died,” Chau tells me. Her father was also wounded by a US bomb, and his old injuries bother him in his old age. For the first time, I’m hearing about a Vietnamese that still hates Americans. Given all that the war did to her father’s family, I’m not surprised. Fortunately his hatred didn’t spread to his chipper daughter, who seems to enjoy chatting with me. 

Chau says her father doesn’t understand her. “He ask me, ‘how can you talk to Americans’? I tell him, that (the war) was long time ago. That finished,” Chau says. “I don’t have a problem with Americans.”
Chau first came to know Americans as a tour guide, when she traveled extensively doing tours for returning US veterans. “Most of them nice. Some of them not so nice,” she says, giving her view of the vets. 

She traveled with them all over the region, from Danang, to the former De-Militarized Zone, and even to the infamous site of My Lai.

“What was it like with them there?” I asked.

“They cry,” she says. “They feel bad. They talk with lady there who tell them what happen. She tell (them) their story. Another lady was a child (then). They cry.” 

Chau's village endured fighting during the war

Chau also brought the veterans to an orphanage, where children continue to arrive today with deformities attributed to Agent Orange. The vets cried there too. Now that Chau owns her own bar, she doesn’t travel with vets anymore. But she’s still happy to translate for American medical teams that come to Danang, who treat the sick in poor communities for free.

Chau likes the American doctors, but there is another group she despises. “The old American men, they come back Vietnam. They marry young Vietnam lady. I don’t like,” she says with disdain. She allows these old men with young brides to come into her bar and drink, but that doesn’t mean that she approves. Nightlife is more relaxed in Danang than in Ho Chi Minh City, so she's had few problems with customers.

“Have you had many bar fights?” I ask, remembering the brawl I had witnessed in the former Saigon. 

“Only one time,” she answered. Predictably, the bar fight involved an American, although he didn’t start it. “It was old American man in the war.”

During an evening at Chau’s place, an American Vietnam veteran was talking with a twenty-something English teacher from England. They both had their share of drinks, when the subject of the war came up. Among other things, the burly young teacher told the veteran that he thought the Americans were baby killers. It went downhill from there.

“The English man, he know boxing,” Chau said. Being bigger, younger, and a trained fighter, the Englishman wasn’t afraid to back up his words with his fists. Chau kicked the brawling pair out, but not before a lot of blood was spilled in the bar. The American got the worst of it.  But that wasn’t the end of it. The American lives in Danang, and he got the last laugh. The Englishman had a well paid job at an international school, and the American found out which one.

“The American, he have Vietnam wife,” Chau told me. “They call the school where he work. Teacher fired.” Out of a job, the English 'boxer' was soon out of the country.

I ponder over this conflict. During my whole time in Vietnam this is the only fist fight I’ve heard of that involved a disagreement about the war, and no Vietnamese were even involved. The two pugilists were from two countries that are supposed to be allies.

Chau tells me later of a fight in a different bar, that ended tragically for her family. Some years back, one of Chau’s brothers was killed. He was just a university student then, out for a night with his friends when the fight broke out. He tried to break it up, and was stabbed fatally in the melee.

The new river front walkway in downtown Danang

The perpetrator was tried and sentenced to a long prison term, but he wasn’t behind bars for long. Less two years after her brother’s death, Chau’s family found out that the killer had already been released. He was long gone, and nowhere to be found. It turns out that the prisoner’s father was a powerful figure in the government. Chau’s father also worked in local government and was a war veteran, but that wasn’t enough power to guarantee justice for his murdered son. In the end, he didn’t have anywhere near the clout that the father of the killer did.

These days, Chau is doing very well. Her parents have retired, and with her pub thriving, she earns enough money to support them. She’s even saved enough to do some traveling. Unlike most Vietnamese, Chau has seen a lot of the outside world, and has traveled throughout Southeast Asia. She’s even flown to New Zealand and her favorite, Australia.

“I would like to go see America some day, but it very far,” she tells me.

I ask her if she would like to go work in America, but she doesn’t see the need. “Here I do what I want,” she says. “I’m free.”

I suppose it’s all very relative. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press don’t concern her. Chau enjoys the freedoms that she wants the most. She has the freedom to travel, and the freedom to run her own business. In her case, that’s all the freedom that she needs.

MEETING THE FORMER ENEMY VIET CONG

Entrance to the old citadel outside Nha Trang

He’s way over 70 years old, but there’s still something youthful about him. Through his small set of glasses, you can still see a genuine sparkle in his eyes. Although he’s gaining in years, he hasn’t lost any of his charisma. He can’t hear out of one ear anymore, but he can hear well enough. Like most Vietnamese, he’s small in stature, though stocky. Although retired, he remains active, and does tai chi in the park every morning for execise.

This friendly man’s name is Ho, as in Ho Chi Minh, and he was a Viet Cong soldier for 21 years. Ho fought the French, and Ho fought the Americans. I happen to be the first American that Ho has encountered, since the war ended.

Ho, the former Viet Cong captain

Ho wasn’t just a low level Viet Cong soldier or cadre. By the time his long military service ended, he had risen through the ranks to become an officer. Ho eventually became a captain, commanding 300 men and women around the coastal town of Nha Trang.

For a senior who has been through so much, Ho seems remarkably healthy. He was wounded from an American bomb in early 1973; that’s why he's deaf in one ear. Ho still has shards of shrapnel that remain in his body from that bomb. That explosion ended his long military career. Ho married, but due to the wars his wife rarely saw him over the years. She lived in the city, while Ho slept in a cave. Those were tough years for this tough little man. Ho’s a real survivor.

I happened to meet Ho in a memorial park in the old Dien Khanh Citadel outside of Nha Trang. This centuries old citadel was first built by the royal Nguyen Dynasty. The French later occupied it, and during colonial days it was a base for the French Foreign Legion. Years later, it became a US Special Forces base, a post for the famed Green Berets. During the American war, Ho commanded troops that attacked this citadel several times. Ho admitted that their attacks were mostly small scale, just firefights shooting over the ramparts. They never managed to take the fort from the Americans. These days he works inside this same citadel, and the military base is gone. His present workplace is a community veterans center that he manages.

From the moment I meet him, Ho seems genuinely glad to meet me. He’s seen other American tourists in Nha Trang, but he never had an opportunity to speak to them. None of them come way out here outside town, and it was here on the grounds of the old fortress that he approached me and my translator.

Ho has two daughters, and he asks if I’m married. When I tell him not, he says with a smile, “You should get a Vietnamese wife!”

War memorial in the old citadel

 Ho’s not referring to his own daughters, of course. They’re already married, and have blessed him with grandchildren.

Ho asks me if I know about agent orange, and I tell him I do. Then he says, “I don’t fight anymore, but I still fight for justice for agent orange.” Ho has suffered health problems due to agent orange exposure. That’s not surprising, since he spent most of the American war out in the forests, which were targeted for defoliation. “Your government paid money to its soldiers who had disease from agent orange,” Ho says, “but still they give no money to Vietnam.” That's not entirely true, though I'm not going to argue with him. The US government has given some money to Vietnam to help clean up agent orange sites, but the amount has been woefully inadequate.

With all Ho’s been through, I’d think that he would still despise Americans, yet he doesn’t. I ask him what he thinks of Americans today, and he’s quick to reply, “No hate. No hate.” To him, the war is far in the past.

As I’m leaving, he uses both his hands to shake mine. Then he says to me again with that twinkle in his eye, “You should marry a Vietnamese woman!”

Ho’s said that to me twice during our brief time together. After all he endured from fighting the US, he still would like an American to marry a daughter of Vietnam. 

For such a small man, he seems to have a great capacity for forgiveness. 

GRIM MEMORIES & NEW BEGINNINGS

US made Huey helicopter (right) & F-5 jet (left). Captured after the US left, the jet was repainted, 'USAF'.

Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is home to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum, where I had discovered the dictator Diem's old tunnels. This should not be confused with the Ho Chi Minh Museum dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, nor with the Ho Chi Minh Campaign Museum. Ho Chi Minh-Ho Chi Minh-Ho Chi Minh!

Does this sound confusing? All of this Ho jargon certainly confuses the tourists visiting Saigon, which may explain the low attendance at all three of these museums. Still, by wandering through these historical sites, I learned that many of these old buildings were once occupied by presidents, prime ministers, colonial governors, and the Americans. After sorting through the propaganda, I unexpectedly found many more fascinating places which were key not only to the Vietnam war years, but to understanding Vietnam today.

An old Huey helicopter sits in front of the old US Information Service building, now a museum

Following the war’s end, the communist government opened one of the world’s most controversial museums. Named, “The Museum of American and Chinese War Crimes”, it became the most visited museum in the country. Later in 1995, when diplomatic relations with the USA improved, the name was officially changed to a less pointed title. As I entered the museum complex, a Vietnamese staffer explained why. “Now we have relationship, more friendship with Americans,” she explained. “We don’t think so much about the past. Change name to ‘War Remnants Museum’.” She’s right in saying that the Vietnamese don’t think much about the past, at least not here. As I look around, I notice that almost all the museum’s visitors are foreign tourists.As I step beyond the walled entrance into the compound, I recognize the 1960’s American architecture of the main building. During the war, this structure used to house the US Information Service. How ironic.

Japanese peace activists play traditional music in Saigon.

Looking around the grounds, it appears as though I’ve walked into a US military yard sale of heavy weapons. There are planes, tanks, howitzers and a Huey helicopter, all booty captured from the ARVN by the North Vietnamese Army at the war’s end.

The very first exhibit is a glass case, holding the book, “In Retrospect, The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam.” The author was former US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara. The display lists one of his quotes: “Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” After all that went wrong with the war here, McNamara had a lot of explaining to do.

Walking around, I notice most photos here were taken by western journalists. It seems that the communists had plenty of money for weapons, but not much money for quality cameras. In museums across Vietnam they have relied on the foreign press for the war’s best photos. Vietnam was the first war in history where the international press corps had virtually free access to almost everywhere. Having a free press running around Vietnam was something the US military would later regret. Many of the journalists would regret it too. 33 of them died during the war in Vietnam.

In front of the main building, sits an old captured F-5 fighter jet, with new white paint along the side reading, “U.S.A.F.”. It’s a weak attempt at propaganda, since no American held airbases were ever taken by the communists during the war. Although F-5’s were built in America, this jet was captured from the South Vietnamese military after the Americans left, and later repainted.

2 Mercedes with the Prime Minister's motorcade entered the museum compound

The museum has its share of both propaganda, and truth. They focus on American, French, and ARVN war crimes. With numerous official investigations and photographic evidence, it is already accepted fact that most of these atrocities occurred. But there is no balance. Not surprisingly, none of the atrocities perpetrated by the communists are mentioned here at all. In keeping with communist propaganda traditions, the Vietnamese government has not owned up to the war crimes their side committed. As the old saying goes, the winners write the history, at least within their own borders.

The quietest part of the complex, is the war atrocities section. If you’ve ever walked through the Holocaust Museum, these exhibits have the same type of atmosphere. There are photos of American soldiers torturing Viet Cong suspects, and photos from the My Lai massacre. These photos aren’t fakes, they were taken by westerners long before the era of digital photography.

Nearby, are mock-ups of tiger cage like prison cells that the ARVN used to hold Viet Cong prisoners. There is no mention of the bamboo tiger cages that the VC used to hold American prisoners in equally barbaric conditions.

A new Ford SUV with the Prime Minister's security team sits parked by an old US built M-48 tank

A crowd gathers nearby, and I go see what is grabbing their attention. It’s a display on Agent Orange. Here we see the effects on humans from all that defoliant sprayed over Cu Chi, and so many other rural areas. There are numerous graphic photos of Vietnamese children with birth defects. The most moving display is a see through enclosure holding two preserved, badly deformed fetuses whose mothers had been exposed to the toxic chemical.

These displays are so disturbing, that some cannot bear to view them. I met two Indonesian women outside who refused to enter this section. “It’s too sad,” they said. I don’t blame them. As the old saying goes, war is hell, and for many the images here are far too upsetting. The graphic photos and grim displays here, are the closest the average civilian of today will ever come to seeing the horrors of war.

Fortunately, the place isn’t all propaganda and gloom. From a side room, I hear the sound of enchanting Asian music. Entering a large room, I’ve come upon a concert by a group of senior Japanese peace activists. They are playing traditional string instruments, with a lone singer accompanying them. They are surrounded by children’s paintings, and a sign on the wall behind them reads, “Wishing for a peaceful and friendly world.” These seniors were anti-war activists from the Vietnam era.

The concert is not just for the visitors, but also for three communist war veterans that are present for the occasion. One woman is a former Viet Cong, who was captured and imprisoned for years during the war. As the concert ends, she greets the visitors. Looking at me, I’m surprised when she smiles broadly, and reaches out to shake my hand. If she still feels any animosity towards Americans, she’s certainly not showing it.

As I prepare to leave, I see some new vehicles have entered the compound. Looking rather out of place, right in front of an American M-48 tank, is a beautiful new black mercedes limousine. Since it has covered flag posts at the front corners, I reason it must be a diplomatic vehicle. To the side of the tank, looking like a tank in its own right, is a full size black Ford sport utility vehicle. With tinted windows and police lights on the roof, it was obviously a security escort. The motorcade also included a Chevrolet mini-van. They were brought in here temporarily since parking is scarce on Saigon's city streets.

Curious, I inquire if there is a foreign ambassador nearby. “It’s for the Prime Minister,” a helpful staffer tells me. There’s a sure sign of change. Vietnam trusts not only vehicles from Germany to protect their Prime Minister, but also vehicles from America.

Like the woman told me earlier, Vietnamese today don’t think so much about the past, and desire more friendship with Americans. The foreigners have more interest in this museum than the Vietnamese do. Relations have changed between Vietnam and America, and thankfully they have changed for the better.

A DEADLY TRAP

A Vietnamese punji trap, designed to trap US foot soldiers

Our group is exploring outside the war tunnels of Cu Chi, when our guide Duc announces, “If you don’t like your wife, let me know, and we can leave her in the tunnel!” A former soldier for South Vietnam during the war, Duc may have had a hard life, but he hasn’t lost his sense of humor.

As I look around, I see another tunnel entrance. This one isn’t for visitors, so I grab a light, and crawl down for a quick look alone. Descending the cramped steps, I get six feet underground, where the tunnel branches out. This tunnel is REALLY cramped; obviously not made for a tall guy like me. It’s only knee high. Squeezing down into the tight space for a better look, my light illuminates the walls of red clay. It gets even tighter further ahead, so I have to stop. If I tried to continue, I would have to shimmy along like a snake, and would probably end up stuck. I don’t really feel like screaming for help, and then being dragged out by my feet.

The war tunnels had many levels, like an underground village

Most of these old war tunnels aren’t safe anymore, and many sections have collapsed from erosion. Although there are no longer Vietnam Cong rebels down here, I recall that certain slithering reptiles still make their homes in these tunnels. With that in mind, I crawl backwards to the entrance and climb out of the tunnel.

Walking on, our group reaches a small clearing in the woods. There are no hiding places here, or so we think. The ground is covered with fallen leaves of the surrounding jungle foliage, and a Vietnamese soldier joins us. He steps towards the center, and reaches down into the leaves. I’m taken aback when he lifts a perfectly camouflaged wooden cover, the size of a shoe box, revealing a dark cavity in the earth beneath. He puts his feet in, drops into the small hole, and pulls the cover closed again, all in less than 10 seconds. His hiding place is virtually undetectable.

This tiny hideout is what was known as a spider hole. Viet Cong would emerge from these holes frequently to fire on patrolling American soldiers. When charging GI’s advanced on the VC’s position, the VC would quickly disappear in seconds back into the spider hole. This left the puzzled, frustrated American soldiers wondering how the lone VC had disappeared.

Feeling brave, I hop into the hole to check it out, but like the tunnels, these small holes were tailor made for the smaller, thinner VC. It takes me longer than the small soldier, but I manage to squeeze in. The lid comes on, and it’s pitch black, tight, but a very effective hiding place. Someone could step on the door itself, and never know I’m down here.

A soldier's hiding place, for thin people only

I climb out, and Duc says that a few days previously, a large Canadian woman got stuck in this very same spider hole. It was a struggle to get her back out. “It took us twenty minutes,” he says. “We needed five people to pull her out.” Duc smirked, added a few vulgarities, and said, “She lost her trousers, her panties, everything.”

As we make our way around the old battlefield, we pass many depressions in the surrounding jungle. These are old bomb craters, of many different sizes. Since the VC tunnel system was never destroyed, this whole region was continuously bombed by aircraft and artillery for years. Duc witnessed a bombing himself. One day he left nearby Dong Du base in a helicopter. “I was riding in Huey,” he said. “We look down, we see smoke come out of ground.”

Their chopper was over tunnel territory, and the smoke they saw was from a hidden chimney. Someone was cooking in an underground Viet Cong kitchen. The co-pilot called in the coordinates, and soon an artillery strike rained down on the surrounding landscape. When the dust cleared, the smoke had stopped.

With so much artillery and aerial bombing, by 1972 Cu Chi’s not all of them exploded. The VC found some of them, and carefully brought them down to the tunnels. Duc brings us to a workshop area of the tunnel network, where a dud 250 pound airborne bomb was left partially opened.

“Here they cut open the bomb, take out explosive,” Duc says. Fighting an enemy that was much better armed then they were, the VC scrounged for weapons and explosives wherever they could. Using simple tools, VC tried to carefully removed the explosives, a very dangerous process. Think of The Hurt Locker, with no body armor. Sometimes as they worked, the bomb went off, killing all the VC near it. When the explosive was successfully removed, it was remanufactured into primitive hand grenades and landmines.

Cu Chi was once well known for fruit trees, but those are long gone now, since it wasn’t just bombs that were dropped on the surrounding woods. “All the tree die, everything dead,” Duc says. “They drop Agent Orange.”

In the early years of the war, Agent Orange was sprayed over rural areas where the enemy was thought to hide. Used as an herbicide to remove brush and trees, nobody knew how toxic the chemical really was in the early years. When the military eventually learned that exposure to Agent Orange was causing health problems, they stopped using it, but by that time it was too late. Millions had already been exposed to the dangerous chemical including soldiers from both sides, and numerous civilians. Many developed health problems later from their exposure, including many types of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, miscarriages, and birth defects in their children.

Decades later trees are growing back now, but few edible crops are grown here, due to the fear of chemicals still present. Much of the land has been switched over to government rubber tree farms.

Arriving at another section of the old battlefield, we reach another clearing, or so it seems. Duc steps into the center and kicks at the grass on the ground. The grassy floor swoops downward like a swinging door, revealing a four foot fall down onto sharpened steel spikes in a pit beneath. This is a punji trap, the kind the VC dug out in the jungle earth, hoping to kill or wound unsuspecting American troops patrolling on foot.

Duc shows us a few more traps here. There are the deep tiger pit-like traps, spiked balls that swung down from trees, and wooden boards that swung down laden with spikes. The most common punji traps were smaller, shallow holes dug out along footpaths. If a GI stepped into one, the bamboo or steel spikes were sharp enough to penetrate through his boot into his foot. The VC sometimes urinated on the spikes before they hid them, to increase the likelihood of infection.

The skeleton of an American M-41 tank, stripped after it was abandoned

We reach another clearing, and come across an old American M-41 tank. It ran over a mine here in 1970, and has been here ever since. Duc says, “One American died here. After tank hit mine, the tank cannot move. He got out, and got shot.”

Some bullet marks are still visible on the outside of the tank. Just steps away, old trenches and a tunnel entrance show where the VC could have taken cover.

Looking at the tank now, it has been stripped of most of its parts. The treads are gone, and the engine’s gone. I remember when I worked in Afghanistan, where I saw old tank engines converted into small village generators. Here, the rest was probably sold for scrap metal by locals. Now it’s just an old shell, for the curious to climb on.

I remember well a tank story from Don, a Vietnam war veteran from my hometown in America. He was an army mechanic based here in Cu Chi. The story went that they had an M-41 tank like this one on their base, and as sometimes happens in any military bureaucracy, all the paperwork for it had been lost. One of the oddities about the US Army, was that it was an extremely difficult, nearly impossible task to re-register a tank without any paperwork. Re-doing the paperwork was such a difficult, time consuming process, that it would have been much easier for them to just take the tank, put it into a hole, and bury it. And that’s exactly what they did.

They found an out of the way corner of the base, and used earth movers to excavate a deep hole. After removing the engine for spare parts, they pushed the tank right into the giant hole, and buried it. That wasn’t quite the end of it. A couple days later, the tank’s radio antenna popped up out of the loose dirt. This worried Don and his buddies. If their base commander found out that they had buried a tank, they would have been in a great deal of trouble. So Don’s Sargeant told him and another GI to grab a couple shovels, go out to the offending antenna, dig down a couple feet, chop it off, and rebury the hole. And that’s exactly what they did.

It almost seems like I should ask Don exactly where that old tank was buried. After all, it could be dug up and all that steel could be recycled. But if that tank was found, it may be more valuable to the Vietnamese government for propaganda purposes. They just might dig it up, repaint it like new, and stick it up on a monument somewhere with a plaque saying how it was captured in battle. The war may be over, but there is still propaganda. 

It would be great for me to get into the old Dong Du base for a look around at Don's old haunts, but I learn that going inside is out of the question. It’s still a military base today, only now it’s occupied by a few thousand troops of the Vietnamese Army. They’re not about to let an American back in.